After you decide on whether you will be buying fertile eggs, young chicks or adult birds, you will need to decide how many birds you will need to get. You also need to give some thought to the gender.

The gender issue is easy. Since female chickens do not need a rooster to lay eggs, the only reasons you may want to get a rooster are:

you want a pet

you plan to be raising show birds

you plan to become a breeder.

In most breeds of chickens, roosters are the most colorful and visually impressive, which is why sometimes people like to have at least of them them around. A fact you need to keep in mind is that roosters can turn aggressive as they get older.

No matter how many birds you plan on having eventually, it is always a good idea to start small if you have never raised chickens before on your New Zealand farm. Start with getting some experience. See how much time and effort caring for the birds will take and scale from there.

Even if you have plenty of experience and know what you are doing, it makes sense to go to a large number of birds in incremental steps, making sure that you don’t experience any issues at each following step.

A young egg-laying hen on average will lay about six eggs per week. Keep this number in mind when calculating how many eggs you need.

When it comes to raising chickens for meat, it doesn’t make sense to do it on a small scale. If you do this on a small scale, your profits will not cover your expenses. This is why for meat-raising purposes you want at least 25 birds. Each batch will take between 8 and 12 weeks to grow to butchering age.